Original subtitles

- I'll tell you when.

- Right. - Fine.

- So, does Lucio already know the question?

- Yes, because watching you in the monitor,

I've remembered this documentary film

about Orson Welles' fiction.

This could almost be an "F for Fulci."

So, I'd like to know... No?

- I haven't seen the film.

- It's wonderful.

- You know, Celentano, when he did his last program...

- Wait, you're documenting it yourselves.

- When I see red, I set off, like a bull.

Tell me when to start. Ask a question and I'll answer.

I answer questions.

- I don't have to tell you that cinema is a hierarchy

where everyone has his place.

But if you say "go," I'll go. I'm an object.

I'm a speaking object.

I am an object of your thoughts.

There's a transmigration of thoughts you're trying to inculcate in me.

I always had this problem of looking like Orson Welles.

Alberto Lattuada once came to watch us shoot MAN, BEAST AND VIRTUE.

He greeted Orson Welles-- I think he knew Lattuada,

perhaps one of the greatest directors we had during that middle period--

Then he came to me and said, "You look like Orson Welles."

And I said, "Alberto, Orson Welles looks like me."

I wasn't being presumptuous, it was a play on words.

Orson Welles himself said I looked like him,

whereas Brigitte Bardot said I looked like Hitchcock,

and she called me "Hitchcock." "Listen, Hitchcock..."

Because I was fat and rotund.

Maybe it was a prediction. I never imagined back then,

nor could Bava, the cameraman, that we'd make thrillers.

I amused myself playing several cameo roles

from the time of TOTO IN COLOR,

to the "porcupine” in AN AMERICAN IN ROME

and Nanni Loy's film MADE IN ITALY, where I act with Anna Magnani.

And I appeared in many of my own films.

In others, I played the doctor. It was a lot of fun.

In VOICES FROM BEYOND, I perform a wonderful autopsy on the corpse.

Part fun, part narcissism,

part dream, really.

I would like to present my own TV program.

In fact, I proposed one 10 years ago and Rai 2 stole it.

Rai has always been a hostile enemy.

"How should it be?" "How should the other one be?"

"How should the coach be?" "What should the horse be like?"

Polanski said the director is the person you ask questions to,

and in many films I've done, I've been obsessed by questions.

I'd like to be sent on the set

knowing only what I have to do, and try to do it well.

And get into the part.

My dream is to be an actor, though with my incoherent life, I could never be one.

Our job is carried out by a team of 50 people

who have to use up a certain amount of millions

over a certain period, and produce something that works,

a product that corresponds to what one person intended.

The solitude of the director is Truffaut's in DAY FOR NIGHT.

The director is always alone.

He must be, as my friend Vittorio Metz said,

another great forgotten humorist,

"He must be both a writer and a bricklayer."

- Why's that?

A writer because he writes, bricklayer because he's in a crew.

The shooting is one of the hardest things there is in cinema, especially in Italy.

Are you filming?

- Rolling.

I was born in Rome

because my mother ran away with a work-shy cousin

who played minor acting roles-- that is, my father-- and she had me.

My family hated my mother and they disinherited her

for running away with her cousin, but this happens a lot in Sicily.

It's very common.

I was born into this family of poor anti-fascists.

A family of women, because the men always died very young.

The first things I saw in my family were the bereavements,

because they wear mourning for 20 years in Sicily,

and before the 20 years are up, someone else dies.

I only ever saw my grandmother in black,

and I lived with my mother, my aunt and my grandmother

and never had any complexes about it.

With my mother, aunt and grandmother, the first things I saw

were the menstrual rags that they used in those days,

and the famous ankle bands they would wear when they had their period.

They don't use them any more.

In this family of women...

All anti-fascist, with a tenor cousin, so I became an opera lover.

His name was Manfredi Ponz De Leon,

the son of my aunt who was divorced from my uncle

and my mother's half-sister...

One of those complicated Sicilian situations Tornatore would like.

I came to Rome and started playing football with my friends.

To hang out in, let's say, intellectual circles.

There was always a dwarf reciting Walt Whitman poems

on a chair.

I found out later it was Truman Capote.

| would talk to this dwarf-- Truman Capote spoke good Italian.

When I read "Other Voices, Other Rooms,"

I realized he was the dwarf who read poems in Vespignani's friend's home.

There was this very beautiful girl there, and I fell madly in love.

And after a while... Seeing I was a poor wretch,

I had this sweater I would wear in the morning,

then I'd turn it inside out; it was green outside, yellow inside...

to have a change of clothes.

And I fell for her.

It might've been mutual, but I didn't have the guts to ask her.

So, one day she said, "I never want to see you again."

That same day it rained. I got on the circle line and read,

"Graduates may apply for the Centro Sperimentale di Cinema."

And I signed up at the Centro Sperimentale.

I did an exam with Luchino Visconti.

He was the president of the commission

with Antonioni, Pietrangeli, Germi, Battistrada

and Barbaro, the great film critic.

Visconti asked me, "What do you think of OBSESSION?"

I told him he had copied all the takes from Jean Renoir,

whose assistant he had been.

Everyone expected him to kick me out,

but he gave me a place and I became his student for a year,

then he left to make THE EARTH WILL TREMBLE.

Then one day I was adapting a script of a film that would never be made--

It was one of the things you do among students-- by Mauro Bolognini.

The film was called "Rusty Jack."

We worked with Bolognini, who lived with Bill Weaver, the music critic,

and now and then another jobless guy appeared, named Franco Zeffirelli.

Suddenly, Bolognini said to me, "I'll introduce you to Steno,”

after I'd been out of work for years. "Let's see if he hires you."

So we went to see Steno, and I met this short man.

He said, "I'm sorry, but we've got an assistant director."

There was this August storm, and I told Mom I was going home.

"No, don't go home, stay here with us." "No, I'm going home."

I was waiting for a phone call from this girl,

another one, not the one who had ditched me.

I went home, and the phone rang.

I thought it was the girl. It was 2 o'clock,

so I answered the phone.

It was a production manager, Mariano Laurenti's uncle, Romolo Laurenti.

He said, "Are you the assistant who came to see Steno?

Come to the studio straight away."

I got on the tram with the last money I had on me,

and went to Farnesina studios,

where I found Steno, Monicelli, Toto,

Libassi, Totd's secretary,

and Toto's favorite at the time, Anna Vita.

Steno said, "We sent for you, as the assistant doesn't get on with Toto."

- Ready ? - Yes.

Go.

MAN, BEAST AND VIRTUE.

MAN, BEAST AND VIRTUE is an unusual film.

Ponti came to us one day-- I was already working with Steno-- and said,

"Listen, I have bought one of Pirandello's plays."

It was called "Man, Beast and Virtue."

I'd read it because my mother, a Pirandello fan, had bought it me.

I said, "Look, Steno, it's a bad play."

So we went to Vitaliano Brancati and wrote this screenplay.

Our organizer was Luigi De Laurentiis,

the one who went into business with his son, Dino's brother,

who came to us while we were writing and said,

"We've got good news. Orson Welles is to play the beast."

We were terrified to hear this great actor was coming,

and we told Toto, who couldn't have cared less;

he could act with anyone, even the Almighty.

He said, "Rita Hayworth's ex-husband? Fine."

And off he went to do some heraldry, as usual.

The film was one of the most troubled of the time

in our work with Steno because...

Three legends together. I gave Steno a small lion tamer's costume.

He was really small; it was a child's carnival costume.

I told him to take the whip and tame all three of those beasts.

But it was the time when Orson started to want to work pro rata.

He wanted to extend the shoot.

In fact, that evening, it took four hours to put his beard on.

He came up to the camera and said,

"Ponti and De Laurentiis are two sons of a bitch,

and Silvia Mangano and Sophia Loren..."

Who was already Ponti's friend, in spite of him being married,

"...are two bitches. Print it."

Steno, Leone and I looked at each other. Leone said, "Shall we?"

"Let's print it. Welles told us to."

Ponti and De Laurentiis really couldn't have cared less.

They just didn't want to pay him pro rata.

In fact, one day he ran off.

We couldn't find him and we had to finish the film with a double.

Cinema, the legend of cinema...

Everyone thinks film making is a place of enjoyment and happiness.

Those who make films know it isn't.

I was with Tonino Delli Colli in Piazza di Spagna, waiting for them

to put up the lights for a Toto film, a night scene.

Totd was happy to film at night. We called it "Byzantine Time,"

because he'd work from 2pm to 7pm or from 5pm to midnight

because he'd go to nightclubs and he had low blood pressure.

We were sitting waiting for the crew, the "lorry" as we call it.

We were wearing duffel coats. It was cold. Me and Tonino Delli Colli,

who also had a stutter,

we were sitting on the Spanish Steps.

We were waiting for the lorry to arrive. It was now 8pm.

We were just chatting about the usual things.

I had already made a name for myself.

I had already written MAN, BEAST AND VIRTUE.

Suddenly, I saw someone getting out of a beautiful car:

my great love, the woman I had gone into film making for.

And so I'd got my own back. I was a scriptwriter,

a young famous scriptwriter and an assistant director, etc.

I went up to her and held out my hand.

I said, "Luisa..." Her name was Maria Luisa.

She looked at me, took 50 lire out of her handbag and gave it to me.

This story left an impression on me.

The woman I had gone into film making for had given me 50 lire.

Cinema has many sides.

- I'll tell you when to start.

Go.

Toto. I was assistant director for about 20 of Toto's films.

I wrote the script for about ten, and made my debut because Toto wanted me,

because Toto justified it in THE THIEVES, my first film.

Indeed, | think Toto made a mistake.

I was so happy as a scriptwriter, but I had yet to debut as a director.

This lasted from 1949-1950, when I started to work with Steno.

My relationship with Toto was not only one of mutual respect.

He was very fond of me, until something strange happened.

One day, I wrote a script which today everyone says is a good film.

I don't know why they air it. It's called THE KING-SIZED BED.

I was to direct it.

To be asked by Rizzoli to direct it was a great opportunity.

Then I got a call from Maidi, who was Rizzoli's production manager.

"Know why you can't make the film? Because Toto doesn't want you."

"Toto doesn't want me?”

I phoned him, but he wouldn't answer.

So I was a bit puzzled.

Years later, I made a film called A STRANGE TYPE with Celentano.

Macario was there, who was making a film with Toto,

and I said, "Will you ask Toto why he didn't want me for this film?"

Steno did it instead.

He said, "I'll go and ask," because he was shooting with us and them.

He came back to Amalfi, where I was filming with Celentano,

and said, "Lucio, he's convinced you had an affair with Franca."

"He's crazy. We're only friends."

"That's why he didn't let you do the film."

We met again two years later. He had already gone blind.

I was shooting one of my films with Franchi and Ingrassia

in De Paolis's yard.

Toto heard my voice, which he was familiar with.

"Hey, Fulci, how are you?"

"Hey, Toto, how are you?"

He allowed me to use the informal "you" form.

He said, "Sit down, let's talk."

He was making a film called TOTO AND PEPPINO DIVIDED IN BERLIN.

The producer was my friend Mariani.

I sat down. "How are you, Fulci?" "I'm fine, Toto."

"I hear you got married." "Yes."

"I hear you have two daughters." "Yes."

"What are they like?"

"They're very religious. Always in church."

"Really?" "Yes, praying for Toto to die."

There was an icy silence.

Toto didn't say anything. He got up and left.

Toto was a wicked and subliminal comedian.

That is, he exceeded our normal sentiments.

Also because he was such an inventor

that he succeeded in destroying with words

anyone who acted with him.

At the same time, he was the protagonist of everything

because he was a genius. Toto was a genius of the word.

I'd been walking round with a script of THOSE TWO IN THE FOREIGN LEGION,

a script I had bought with the money I had left.

I wanted to make a film but couldn't find a pair of comedians in Italy,

except for Peppino and Toto, who were now out of reach.

The first scene was to be shot at night in Remembrance Park, Naples,

and I read the script that Corbucci and Grimaldi had corrected,

and I realized that Franco was the aggressive one

and Ciccio was the thick one, the stupid comic.

I said, "Guys, we've got it wrong. Franco's stupid, Ciccio's aggressive."

The educated man, the erudite one is Ciccio.

It was nighttime, we were about to start shooting...

I had read the script, but I thought they were the right roles.

But they had either written it wrong, or they hadn't understood.

Franco always said, right up until his death,

that that was the debut of the duo Franchi and Ingrassia.

My relationship with Franco and Ciccio was one of mutual cooperation.

They did what I said.

So much so that when Lombardo tried to make some films with Steno,

A MONSTER AND A HALF

and another with Corbucci called I FIGLI DEL LEOPARDO,

they were so bad that Ciccio called me to make another film.

For a year I was out of work. I only worked with Franchi and Ingrassia.

Ciccio invited me to make HOW WE GOT INTO TROUBLE WITH THE ARMY.

It amuses me to say that Giusti said there are two great scenes.

There's the final one; that's not bad.

Then there's the scene where we had the cosmos.

We created the cosmos in a small studio in Cinecitta.

We had black panels and scattered light bulbs.

As there's no dimension to the cosmos,

with the camera slowed down, I had Franchi wander through the cosmos.

He made a leap from a trampoline-- he was quite good at that--

And wandered in the cosmos.

Then Laika's skeleton floated by.

Then suddenly, as we were getting ready,

from a little window above these black panels,

a props guy looked out and said,

"Boss, the cosmos is ready!”

It became famous in Italian cinema.

Di Venanzo, who had come to see me

because he was shooting Elio Petri's film,

THE 10TH VICTIM,

and every time I bumped into him, he'd say, "Lu, the cosmos is ready!"

We filmed, and as there was no dimension,

I amused myself with them going up, down...

From the same point, though, as I only had black panels and light bulbs.

I believe the Franchi and Ingrassia films in my career were the most memorable.

I am convinced Franchi and Ingrassia will be rediscovered.

Look, that's not working.

- I changed the battery.

- I had to interrupt this symbiosis...

- Wait, are you starting?

- Yes, he's started, right? - No.

- The light's on. - Ready.

Go on, Bruno.

Go on.

I had to interrupt this symbiosis with Franchi and Ingrassia.

Not because I didn't respect them, but because I was young and ambitious.

My intellectual friends tormented me: "You make commercial films!"

I aimed for a different world,

not to be classified as "Franco, Ciccio and Fulci."

It was hard work getting myself a film. I had to produce it.

I met Cortellacci, who'd received some end of employment money.

Cortellacci distributed THE EASY LIFE, going against everyone.

We produced it together.

He had produced two of my films with Franchi and Ingrassia,

and we made MASSACRE TIME.

I made this kammerspiel western.

That is, practically...

It's an Oedipal story,

a relationship between a good brother, a wicked brother,

and a crazy brother.

I tried to make it psychologically more profound, and very cruel.

Crueler, I said to my collaborators, than Leone's.

So I made this really Artaudian film,

as Moravia described it in his review.

He didn't bother much about my films, but this one impressed him.

We produced the film, it was a huge success, and we made a big profit.

This western represented for me a break with all the genres,

with my old genres. That is, comedy.

- Goon.

I said, "Guys, I love Hitchcock. Let's try a thriller.”

We wrote ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER.

We shot it, due to Amati's generosity, in San Francisco.

It took us nearly a year to write the screenplay

because we wanted a film without policemen.

A film in which the story took place inside.

Inside, and...

Basically, we spent...

We filmed it really well, with every means possible.

The film came out and it was a huge success.

It was the first Italian detective story

without a policeman driving up in a car.

The film takes place in various settings, with a sick relationship.

There was a certain amount of sex in it,

because it's what Amati wanted and so did we.

- A true Italian crime, but filmed in America.

And in English.

With fine actors.

One was poor Marisa Mell, who was famous at the time.

She agreed to make this film with this young director

because he let her play two roles.

My rule was...

An actor will always accept a part of a priest or a homosexual.

An actress will accept two roles, or one as a whore.

Marisa Mell agreed to play two roles.

We had Marisa Mell, Jean Sorel and Elsa Martinelli.

We shot it all in San Francisco.

And it was one of my best screenplays.

It's a crime story without any horror to it.

A perfect crime story with an unexpected ending

that Dario Argento watched three times and said he couldn't copy it.

He said this to others; he's not fond of me.

Dario Argento only pretends to like me.

- It's not the only one, because I've seen THE PSYCHIC, too.

THE PSYCHIC is another pathological case.

After the success of ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER,

I squeezed in BEATRICE CENCI,

which was followed by... Wait... BEATRICE CENCI...

Then they told us to make another film: A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN.

Florinda Bolkan had made...

ONE NIGHT AT DINNER, and she was the most important actress around.

When Amati said, "Let's try and hire Florinda Bolkan,"

she'd never heard of me, she didn't know of me.

Amati told her I was a good director.

Florinda Bolkan, who was a smart woman, fell in love with this story.

A colleague I won't name because he's dead, said to her,

"Fulci's the one with Franchi and Ingrassia!"

But she didn't care.

She'd seen ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER and said I could direct.

That's how my special relationship with Florinda Bolkan began,

and I filmed A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN,

a film that hatched from the fact that Amati, who was a producer--

But unfortunately isn't any more, as he's a builder, who spent money--

And an actress I had a great relationship with. A great actress.

Everyone said Florinda was petulant,

but she never was with me, not even in DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING.

And she put up with difficult conditions in DUCKLING.

I made this film.

At the same time, Dario Argento was making THE CAT O' NINE TAILS.

While I was making BEATRICE,

he was making THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE,

which was a success.

They showed THE CAT O' NINE TAILS at the Empire

and he made more money than me because it was cruder.

At the Rouge et Noir in Rome,

I made less, but we made as much as we could with it.

He made more,

and Argento's legend came about, and my "semi-legend."”

We were the two kings of the Italian thriller.

Then, as I am a director who likes to try all the genres,

for a while after DUCKLING I made no more crime stories.

I made THE EROTICIST,

and then went back with DUCKLING, perhaps my best film,

to making crime stories again.

He carried on depicting his nightmares.

- What does cinema and time mean to you?

What relationships, what does cinema offer in respect to time?

To enclose it. To enclose it in my hands.

It means I can hold it in my hands.

My relationship with time is a terrible one,

because it's part of my dialogue with death.

My latest film is a complete dialogue with death.

When the French say, "You're a poéte du macabre..."

I don't fear death, but I've been thinking about it for a long time.

Because there's this doubt there's another place, as Socrates says.

If it were another place, it'd be better than Pericles' dictatorship,

or else there's a long sleep without dreams.

So my dialogue with death goes hand in hand with my dialogue with time.

I'm a man who's had a lot of fun in life.

You never think I am gloomy, a sad man.

Many directors of comedy are pessimists and sad.

I was a comedy director and I always had fun.

I covered all the genres in my career,

and I've never felt uneasy with any kind of film.

Not because I'm good, I just like to tackle all the genres

through what I think of the world.

In fact, my view continues to be doubt and sin.

DUCKLING is a film about sin.

We wrote the story because Medusa was producing it.

The first made by Medusa, a great production house.

They were naive. They were really decent people,

great hire contractors, but it was the first film they'd produced.

They wanted to produce.

A production manager persuaded them and they wanted to make it.

We wrote it, and the story was set in the deep south.

I wanted to set it in Turin, and I think it would have been better.

In the middle of these huge blocks where the immigrants from the south

bring their superstitions.

It's a film about superstition and sin.

The film starts with a confession, in fact.

There's this motorway that cuts through these towns

that have remained in an allotropic, De Mitian state.

Those abandoned towns with a motorway passing through them.

It's a film about sin.

I got the idea for this killer priest who didn't want kids to grow up.

He wanted them to remain innocent.

I used Florinda Bolkan as a witch from the south,

and she gave an extraordinary performance.

I really liked the scene in which they killed her.

The townspeople believe she is the child killer,

whereas she used witchcraft and stuck pins in them.

The ignorant villagers kick her out and kill her

in a cruel fashion, with a song by Ornella Vanoni to cover the sound.

Barbara Bouchet agreed to appear naked.

There's that famous morbid scene where the child sees the naked woman.

The scene was filmed after a statement from a notary.

Barbara Bouchet naked on a sofa,

the boy was filmed without Barbara Bouchet on the set.

The scene shot behind the child was shot with a dwarf friend of ours,

which was put on record.

We shot it like this to avoid getting the usual letter.

We got more letters back then, and we might in the future,

that said "the lack of morals..."

And that's how it was shot.

I think it was one of the most morbid scenes I ever shot.

Behind this sea, this sea in a bottle that moves,

there's this child who discovers sex and starts to sweat.

He's puzzled why he is taking to his naked and immodest mistress,

because she provokes him,

this tray...

To throw suspicion on Barbara Bouchet,

according to the rules of the crime story plot,

which actually represented my whole concept of sin.

- What do you think of liars?

I'm a liar.

What can I think?

Not as much as Federico Fellini, but I'm a liar.

No, I'm not, I'll explain...

I'm not a liar at work, but I am in life.

A great liar with women.

I made up for my unattractive appearance with a series of lies.

Some say Fulci is a womanizer. But women have worn me out.

As ugly as I was, I always fancied beautiful women.

Usually the prettiest are the kindest.

Then life causes you to end relationships.

It depends on so many things...

- Answer it. - We'll carry on.

- With the phone ringing? - Go on.

- Is Fulci a wealthy man?

No, he's very poor. I've squandered money my whole life.

I've had boats, horses, women, everything.

My dichotomy is between my life as a spendthrift, a squanderer,

attempted lover, sometimes a lover,

and the cultural desire to emerge from the genres.

So I am a wanted man who was caught by the genres.

I've loved sport. I played football, did athletics, swimming, everything.

Then I fell in love with a sailing boat,

and it saved me from many periods of depression.

The fact of not hearing any noise, living in contact with nature...

This is rhetorical nonsense, but I'd like people to try it.

Even some of my neurotic colleagues.

It would help Argento and Bellocchio with their neuroses

to get in a sailing boat and sail away into the horizon,

instead of psychoanalyzing themselves

or getting psychoanalyzed, and consulting fortune tellers.

Get on a nice sailing boat where it's silent, sail away.

But you don't know how to,

in that you don't know how to sail spiritually in a sailing boat.

- Go.

A film, as idiots say,

that represented a catharsis for me was BEATRICE CENCI.

BEATRICE CENCI was promoted by a producer

from the Veneto region. He said, "I want to make a film with serenades."

We started studying BEATRICE CENCI,

but we didn't notice the fundamental flaw

in the story of Beatrice Cenci.

We decided, with my friend Gianviti, who we were writing thrillers with,

to make a film with various sides to the story of Beatrice Cenci.

Angel or demon? Demon or Angel?

And we wrote two screenplays: one for the producers, with serenades,

and another for the actual film, a crude and wicked film,

in a setting where they first tortured you...

temporal power, and then sent you to hell.

We shot the film in seven weeks.

I worked really hard on it.

When we finished, I realized we had made a modern film, a good film.

A friend of mine called a critic at "Paese Sera"

and said, "Give poor Fulci three stars for it."

The critic spoke to another critic,

who didn't like me much, I don't know why,

who wrote his piece and gave me one star.

When my friend Gianviti protested to the critic,

he said, "We can't give Fulci three stars!”

This shows the racism there is in the environment

I collaborated and worked in, and voted.

I really don't like it.

In the meantime, I was struck by a tragedy.

My wife killed herself because she'd been diagnosed with cancer.

I went home and my mother met me at the door, saying,

"Marina's dead. She's gassed herself."

We buried her five days later. She is still in my heart.

I was left to look after two daughters, aged 6 and 9.

I went on editing BEATRICE CENCI. I got on with my life.

When my mother died, I had to bring the girls up,

and I remarried, which was a mistake.

I carried on working.

I believe film making saved me.

Filmmaking and my sailing boat saved me from the problems everyone has,

and I bore them with great peace of mind.

Cinema is also a great divider.

I believe it separates our own feelings.

I have loved it a great deal, and still do, even if I'm getting on.

I love it a great deal, everyone's cinema.

I believe cinema is the only universal message that reaches us,

the message that we choose.

Television forces it on us. It grinds up the messages,

it sends them to us moment by moment.

Whereas cinema lets us choose, choose what we want.

This is the story of BEATRICE.

When I watch it, I realize it's an excellent film people couldn't like.

I met Moravia. "Alberto, how come you didn't like it either?"

His perceptive remark...

"We have always analyzed the period.

To be honest, it's a stupid, nasty little story of incest

that people just don't care about.

The plot is all wrong."

Moravia was right.

- Okay ? - Break.

- Right, ready? - Yes, rolling.

- When you're ready.

The young critics like Garofalo and Canova,

who are trying to revolutionize the old archetypes--

Ghezzi, etc.--

go looking for minor films of 2000.

They go looking for the "terrorist" directors, too.

And they discovered me.

So, my relationship with the critics is a very strange one.

It is often a relationship of later revaluation.

At the point of death, they'll say I was intelligent.

I feel like Lorenzo Lotto, who for years was considered a craftsman,

then someone said, "Maybe Lotto's an artist."

I consider my critical revaluation...

Carlo Lizzani once said at an RCS conference

promoting a series of Italian videos,

that the revaluation of Fulci's films started 10-12 years ago,

because someone took another look at my films.

A critic went to see THE PSYCHIC years after...

I was invited to the MystFest '86 by Irene Bignardi,

and before that I'd been invited by Laudadio.

He said, "I'd never seen it. It's a good film."

"Why hadn't you seen it?"

The film didn't make money in Italy because it was a protest film.

He hadn't been to see it, yet he said, "Crikey, not bad!"

Go and watch films.

I love the omnivores of cinema,

the critics who go to see everything and try to save,

even in a snobbish way, these genres.

They look for the director who is different from the others.

There are directors without spikes working on the sidelines.

Then there are directors who work on the sidelines

who sometimes have spikes.

I consider myself a director who has a few spikes,

simple ones, maybe.

Antonioni has to be good at any cost. Fellini has to be extraordinary.

Rosi has to be beautiful.

Petri sometimes is no good because he's not a communist,

particularly for left-wing critics, who are the worst.

Everyone knows my leaning, so you can't say I'm being biased.

So cinema is considered by critics

according to rules and conventions of art and non-art.

Maselli himself invented this new law,

so there are committees that have to decide "racially”

whether a film is classified as an art film or a commercial one.

They don't know that after 20 years,

some films considered masterpieces look really stupid,

and some films that were considered pointless

have become cult movies.

For example, Browning in America,

Ulmer-- DETOUR is a masterpiece. Razzini rediscovered it.

Who knew about DETOUR in Italy?

And Ulmer's films? He made 180 films,

some for the Yiddish community. He was an all-round director.

Let's talk about Fulci the craftsman, or maybe Fulci the author.

The French discovered me and wrote things about BEATRICE,

then gradually, like all nonconformists, they grew fond of me.

France takes in anarchists and directors unloved back home.

The best example is Freda,

or even Bava, who is considered a mediocre director in Italy,

whereas he is a fine director of fantasy.

Another strange case is Cottafavi.

Ignored in Italy, in France he is considered a great director.

Bava is totally ignored in Italy,

but in America he is considered one of the greatest directors of fantasy.

Highly thought of by critics who attack even American films,

the ones that attack Cimino.

I... Have you finished? Shall I stop?

- Lucio, will you tell us about your meeting with Mario Bava?

We were close friends. We usually spoke of love affairs and dogs.

We never spoke about special effects, of what we were going to do.

We met when he had already had his period of great success,

and he made DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS.

It isn't a minor film, because it's rather funny.

He said, "You've learned to do special effects?

I taught you, didn't I?

No, you taught yourself," he said in front of Franchi and Ingrassia.

- And compared to the horror genre,

Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda and later Dario Argento,

how do you think they differ from your kind of film making?

Differ from my films?

Well, my films are totally removed from the horror genre.

I became a director of horror by chance.

What is the difference between these directors and me?

Except for Bava, that is.

They are lacking in humor. Freda and Argento are lacking in humor.

Freda is a very scholarly person, an extraordinary former sculptor

with amazing aspects to his life, but there's no humor in his films.

I think there's a lot more of it in my films. They're more playful.

I think that's why the Americans preferred them.

American cinema has created a whole current of young directors

who play around a bit with horror, overdoing it sometimes.

- Lucio, let's talk about your horror films now.

Do you agree, as Ungari said,

that horror films are the best concept of cinema?

Horror is a pure concept.

Seven houses in hell,

a villa next to a cemetery where a monster is buried-- I mean my own,

there's a monster who kills people.

A little girl is suddenly kidnapped by the television-- Tobe Hooper.

Even Spielberg's first film is a concept.

His first film was a horror film. Everyone talks about DUEL,

but Spielberg's first film was actually a horror film,

made for television when he was 20, lucky guy.

It's a brilliant film, as it's a story with a small idea that flows.

Let's talk of Wes Craven, THE HILLS HAVE EYES,

with a group of cannibals about to kill.

But it's not a horror film. It's a fake horror film,

even if it's a great film, like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS,

because there the horror depends on the characters.

In horror films, the character is not important.

What's interesting is this moving freely in the absolute.

The strange thing is

they are films the public likes despite the unhappy endings.

In CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, my poor editor,

who has edited my films for 25 years, Vincenzo Tomassi, had an idea.

The film ended with a child running toward them. It looks nice.

He said, "Why don't we break up the frame,

have different pieces of the image?

Then we'll see their faces offset,

after acting, looking doubtfully towards the camera."”

The critics wrote 500,000 times that the film ended badly

because of this wonderful doubt that the child was a zombie.

Vincenzo Tomassi thought up that ending.

In THE BEYOND, for example, they end up in the afterlife.

I mean, these people are dead, but the cinema-goer accepts them,

because we accept horror in that it's a pure concept.

There's no real reason, it's the concept.

- Lucio, the topic of sin that you say is in all your films,

is it present in your horror films, too?

Of course! THE BEYOND.

In THE BEYOND, there's always a picture in front of them.

The picture represents the doubt of what was behind it.

Doubt.

My films, as you quite rightly said,

all have this supporting structure of doubt.

In THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, the doubt is who's under there.

What do we want to understand? What do we want to know?

Is there a monster? A killer?

Is it one of them? The husband? The wife?

Doubt is the basis of horror films and thrillers,

as well as the central idea.

In CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, too,

they go to this city and wonder if it could be haunted by the devil.

I always use these themes.

That's why I think they are rather personal films.

Then the sin, the doubt... The sin in DUCKLING.

The sin in THE EROTICIST.

The politician actually does something that disgusts him.

That is, he is always groping the backsides of these women.

It represents everything he's not allowed to do,

because of his education, sodomized by the Church.

I regard myself as a kind of accumulation of incoherence,

something many have accused me of.

In fact, incoherence is part of my work.

My work is incoherent,

because I hate directors who always make the same film.

So many directors have made the same film all their lives.

They ended up not doing anything that didn't make them look good.

The monotony of the same film. I've always changed mine,

because I consider myself incoherent and I'm proud of that,

because incoherence means imagination.

I think Baudelaire said that, but I'm not sure,

because everyone quotes it,

but nobody reads them so you can quote what you want.

Some people claim I am totally crazy

because I've always tried to insert things.

Apart from the fact I've always written my own films,

from AN AMERICAN IN ROME with Steno, then the others,

because I always try to emerge from the genre.

I work inside the genre, but now and then I explode a bomb

that attempts to blow up the genre. In fact, I have worked in many genres.

Even WHITE FANG was an extremely brutal film,

because of the cruelty of man towards animals.

They banned it in Germany because they said it was too violent.

And it's a film for kids! Disney would never have made WHITE FANG,

because I attempted to show that man is cruel and wicked,

and the anthropomorphic animal will save us.

If you read the book, it's nothing like my film,

because the book starts out with Klondike

and twenty pages later ends up in a notary's home in San Francisco,

where he defends this public notary from attacks, etc.

I set the whole story in Klondike,

because for me the protagonist was the dog.

In fact, I had Franco Nero, who was being as difficult as ever:

"This film is disgusting!"

Whereas he was to have made THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN.

But the film was a great success.

I gathered the cast together... Virna Lisi still tells this story.

The dog was rummaging about, eating meat in the snow, and I said,

"Let me warn you all..."

This was Fernando Rey, Virna Lisi, Franco Nero, John Steiner...

"This is the protagonist of the film. You're just his sidekick."

So I have always tried to trigger a bomb inside the genre,

and to go from genre to genre.

So some producers didn't like me.

CONQUEST is an archaeological film

which I shot against the light, with smoke and such,

as I wanted to portray the friendship between Occhipinti and Jorge Rivero.

A commissioned film, but I also attempted to move the film...

What is that one about fire?

The French one?

Everyone made films like that, and I tried to change it a bit.

In fact, CONQUEST was a great success abroad. No one saw it in Italy.

In ROME 2033, this is what I did:

I made a science fiction film about Rome

in which there was a theme that interested me,

the fact that television will soon take over everything.

These men kill each other. No one goes to the stadiums,

they watch and enjoy these killings on TV.

These gladiators escape from where they were imprisoned,

and the eye of the television, seen from the eye of one of them,

is still able to photograph it.

These things really happened. It's prophetic.

- From this point of view, is THE EROTICIST a prophetic film, too?

We wrote it and we got into a lot of trouble for it,

because an MP recognized himself in the film. He's now known to be gay,

but he's still powerful. But it wasn't true.

We'd made a film about a Christian Democrat MP.

Amati, who was a very liberal producer, allowed us to make it.

I wrote it along with Continenza and Jemma,

who was a Christian Democrat,

Continenza was a communist, and me left-wing.

I also asked Luciano Cirri, who created the Bagaglino, to work on it,

and he was right-wing.

Because we all had to be united.

And the film predicts everything that's happening.

In fact, Gordon wrote at the time,

though later they said it might have been Biagi,

"This is a prophetic film."

When I watch it again, at a certain point Buzzanca,

dressed as a Christian Democrat,

spooked this MP in such a way that he said,

"Ah, I'm ruined!” And did something I will tell you about later.

At a certain point, Francis Blanche,

who played a priest, says to him,

"Sing, sir, you have to work off the stress,"

because the film focuses on him, who is sexually repressed,

and he realizes that when he sees a woman he has to grope her.

From this farce, it turns into cruel and terrible moral fable.

Why don't they air it again?

They say they will, but what you see is just a stump.

He says, "Sing, sir."

I think people will start singing "Giovinezza" again.

It was 1971.

When the film came out, this happened. It was an amazing scene

from the history of cinema. No one ever said it. It came out...

It was an absolute first.

Amati and I went to hear what the censors had to say.

It took place in Rome in some basement in Via delta Ferratella,

where the Ministry is, in this kind of cubbyhole where you go

and with the editor re-edit the bits they want cut out...

Censorship is brutal.

I wonder what will happen now,

because there are progressive censors and the other kind.

They all censor things their own way. Bunuel is right, it's ignoble.

We were waiting in a really squalid waiting room

for the board to call us in,

because they usually talk to the screenwriters.

Three hours went by and no one sent for us.

Then we opened the door and the board had gone.

They'd vanished.

They had refused to pass judgment on the film.

Then the copy of the film vanished,

and I was told they'd taken it to the Viminale.

The politicians of the regime had no sense of humor, nor the future ones.

I am a mild anarchist, so I agree,

I agree with those who are anarchists and those who are mild.

The film was projected with the police guarding

the Christian Democrat nomenclature.

At the end, this gay politician, the Prime Minister, said,

"What will they say about me abroad?"

Fanfani, a witty man, said,

"You don't think this film will be seen abroad?"

It was boycotted in every way.

It was never aired on TV because the nomenclature was scared,

because the nomenclature is the same in every regime.

So THE EROTICIST is a non-prophetic film which I really love.

It's not even a comedy.

It's a cruel, wicked film with those who kill.

It contains my opinion of sin and doubt, with the Church,

with everything.

It's a film I would like young people to see.

A young friend of mine told me

that 100 young people saw it at a school of cinema he taught in,

and they told him, "This is a modern film!"

"No, it's a film from 1971, 24 years ago!"

Because the nomenclature is the same, it never changes.

There's this false position, which is due to the left-wing

and to the dictatorial dominion of Italian comedy,

a dictatorial dominion that has destroyed everyone's ideas.

While we fought on a small island,

a few people went to make their films beyond Lugano.

We need meritocracy when it comes to art films, too,

but not by deciding beforehand what's an art film and what is not.

I invite young people to do like they do in America,

where the struggle, for art films, too, is authentic,

and does not depend on political support.

I don't like young directors who are pampered by politics.

The other day I met one of these old guys

who work, or used to work in television.

He said to me, "Fulci, get in with the Northern League."

I said, "I'm not getting in with anyone."

I've never done it, I don't know how it's done.

I've got in with the League. I was a Socialist, now I have work.

My position is extremist, even in political terms.

I am not a member of a political party. I'm a mild anarchist.

And I would like you to notice this total anarchy in my films.

Even my films with Franchi and Ingrassia were anarchist films.

THE EROTICIST is extremely anarchist.

Horror is anarchistic,

because it has no moral basis to base itself on.

Anarchist is the thought,

and history goes towards anarchy, but horror goes towards anarchy.

Even my thrillers are anarchist because they always go beyond;

they go beyond onirical facts.

I tried a parapsychological thriller with THE PSYCHIC,

a magnificent film that didn't make as much money as the usherettes

in the cinema, the usherettes' torches.

It was very successful in America despite being complicated,

because the subject was parapsychology.

Argento tackles it his own way. I did with it with a crime story.

I always have a problem with time,

present time and future time.

Perhaps it's my most crucial film from this point of view.

A woman sees her future,

believes it is something that has happened to others,

whereas it is her own future.

- Let's talk about MANHATTAN BABY, where there is an unusual sequence

with some stuffed birds that come to life.

I really like that scene.

It came to me as I thought, “They're not Hitchcock's birds,

they're dead birds."

So at a certain point, Cinieri,

who plays a kind of guru, a soothsayer,

is destroyed by all those he has forced to stick by him.

So they jump on him and kill him.

So he emerges in this cloud of straw,

which again is a citation.

The cloud of straw is a citation from ZERO FOR CONDUCT,

a citation which is recycled. It's an homage, it's not copied.

The meaning is this.

There are creatures around me I forced into death and immobility.

These creatures kill me.

Perhaps it is my favorite scene in a very modest film.

Whereas, if we choose the scene with the most horror,

I believe it's the whole...

the final scene of THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY,

where there is a monster who feeds off others.

He's made up of other people's parts and speaks with a child's voice,

who kills the father, the mother, and attempts to kill the kids.

The children escape, but a nurse arrives and he takes her away

and we know she is already dead,

and I will end with a quote from Henry James, the novelist.

We don't know if the kids are monsters or the monsters are kids.

It's the scene I've always dreamt of shooting.

I've always dreamt of shooting The 7th Cavalry

with the dolly following the movement, and he starts to say,

"Trot!

Gallop!

Charge!"

With 600 horses.

I've never even had 30 horses in my films.

I envied Sergio Leone, but he didn't have a cavalry charge either.

- Some critics have accused you

of following previous films a bit too much,

and using things from them. What do you think? Are they right?

No, I don't think so.

I'd like the critics to tell me which ones.

- There are some things, like in AENIGMA,

close references to CARRIE, to PATRICK,

and even to SUSPIRIA.

CARRIE was a story line of the producer,

who said either you make this film or there's nothing doing.

I liked other things about AENIGMA, such as the snails.

It's not that I don't know CARRIE,

but I tried not to think of CARRIE while I was making the film.

As for SUSPIRIA,

as always, Dario Argento said I copied him.

But the truth is I cannot copy him, because I am a legend.

Argento is a man who lives in nightmares.

Argento shouldn't say... "I'm a legend." I'm joking, obviously.

I am an extreme director. Argento is locked inside his nightmares.

He goes around telling people I copy him.

I've never copied him. My films are very different.

He made films with a lot of blood; I made crime stories without a drop.

I made horror films in my own way.

The Americans could accuse me of doing things like they do,

in that my screenplay writer worked in America with Stephen King,

but Argento definitely can't accuse me of that.

I don't live, like Argento, off my dreams. My dreams are peaceful.

There's only one dream that torments me:

Galloni, the MP presiding over the High Council of the Judiciary,

chases me in a square cemetery and I can't get out.

If you look closely at Galloni, you realize it really is a nightmare.

- Let's talk about the theme of the eye and ocular destruction.

Buriuel cuts an eye with a razor; you remove them from the eye socket.

Is that an amplification of the citation or something else?

It is a precise reference to Dadaism, and not just Dadaism.

For Surrealists and Dadaists, the eye was very important.

All Apollinaire's essays on eyes. Everyone's written about eyes.

The frustrated eye, the cut eye, the destroyed eye,

means the loss of one's reason.

So I use eyes as the end of reason,

as absolute freedom, this destruction of the eye.

I used it 3 or 4 times. I used it with Olga Karlatos in ZOMBIE,

in a scene that became famous for the difficult special effects.

I used it with a plumber in THE BEYOND.

I used it in THE BEYOND, both with the plumber and the doctor,

who sticks a piece of glass in his eye.

It's part of my fun, the absolute denial of reason,

the absolute freedom that the Surrealists always aimed to assert.

It's a kind of homage to Max Jacob, to Apollinaire.

- Tell us how they chose you to make ZOMBIE.

ZOMBIE was strange.

The producers, De Angelis and Couyoumdjian, wanted to make a film

directed by Joe D'Amato.

Tucci, a producer I knew, was the production manager,

and he was a rather smart producer for those times.

He said, "I don't want to do it with D'Amato. I want it more violent."

He phoned me and asked me to persuade Merola,

who was doing Franchi's show with me,

to make a film by Lenzi about some thugs of New York.

Merola refused, and Merola had a lot of respect for me.

In fact, he was the director of a TV series

that was a great success in Naples, LACRIME NAPULITANE.

I filmed it with four cameras.

I asked Merola about it and he said, "Do it, he's a friend of mine."”

Tucci reminded him, "Fulci knows how to do these things. Call him."

They told me, "We'll pay you a small fee and a percentage."

I made ZOMBIE and started working again.

A boat abandoned in New York that doesn't know where to go.

There are zombies on it, it's from an island where zombies are born.

That is, where power comes from. It's set in Haiti, in fact.

The zombies attack people who also turn into zombies,

because power is important here,

the fact that power is contagious, and gives you the chance to wield it.

What are the zombies of Haitian legend?

They were slaves who were subdued by giving them drugs.

They were used to do terrible jobs until they died.

Then it became, in the light of Catholic doctrine,

the resuscitation of the living dead.

Why living dead? Because they are difficult to Kill.

In fact, the poor peasants used as zombies were difficult to kill.

They wouldn't die. They worked all day long and never slept.

- Who are the zombies in your opinion?

The zombies?

Those in power.

Because you can't destroy them unless you shoot them in the forehead,

and that's hard to do because they hide their faces.

You see them all the time on TV.

I managed to finish all my films, all except one.

I didn't like the producers who ill-treated the Filipinos.

It was ZOMBIE 3, one of my worst films.

A director called Mattei finished it.

I could have gone on making horror films for years.

But I suddenly changed my genre.

I saw Cronenberg's THE FLY and I was really impressed.

I wanted to make horror films more human.

So I started to--

Apart from A CAT IN THE BRAIN, a little narcissistic and exhibitionist,

and also a bit of a play on myself--

I started to make films that didn't do too well.

I then made seven films one after another and stopped again.

Then another seven films.

From the methodological analysis of a director point of view,

I am absolutely abnormal.

I consider myself absolutely abnormal.

- You say when Fulci sticks to a genre, he makes money,

but when Fulci expresses himself freely, he doesn't?

No, with some films I loved, like DUCKLING, I made money too,

but by chance.

I'm like those prostitutes who, after 20 years on the streets,

marry for love.

Because now and then I tried to shake off the genres

and I tried to make a different kind of film.

I can say BEATRICE, DUCKLING... THE PSYCHIC

is a totally abnormal thriller.

DOOR TO SILENCE, VOICES FROM BEYOND, and A CAT IN THE BRAIN,

a film against everyone, and my best selling video,

because it is an amusing interplay on monsters.

I made fun of myself and the monsters.

It's a strange film, a film I consider totally absurd,

which cost 200 million lire to make in 1990,

helped by my younger daughter who organized it all.

- It was more about a monster than monsters.

That's right, it was like a herald of "monsterism."

But a playful one, so much so it has an ending

that the three geniuses of Italian production and distribution--

All three had the intelligence of a fool--

Decided to cut the ending

because it was too playful, but the whole film was.

In the final scene I appear as a monster, but I'm not a monster.

I was encouraged by a psychoanalyst and my nightmares

to take part in some murders, without committing them.

The film ended with this device of a film within a film...

This play on monsters, the representation of monsters.

Monsters are merely the projection of our nightmares.

If I am then tormented and exploited by this,

I am not a monster,

but someone who has entertained other people with monsters.

I just added my humor.

I remember when I made CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD,

I bumped into Lattuada, an old friend of mine,

and he said, "It contains all your tragic humor.” It's true.

I have always played around with horror films.

If you're attentive, in my horror films

there's always something which, in the exasperation or hyperbole,

goes beyond the usual horror film.

I am different from Argento, and he hasn't realized,

because he has no humor.

Whereas I am more like the young American horror film directors,

and maybe Spielberg, too.

No offense intended,

because there's a lot of humor in it, hyperbole, too.

For example, the new school of directors,

young people who are emerging now,

are all directors who play about with the horror genre.

And I did, too, whereas Argento believes his nightmares.

I exacerbate them, I bring them,

I exorcise them in A CAT IN THE BRAIN

because I become the protagonist of my nightmares.

But can I, an old man with a beard, be the protagonist of my nightmares?

They force me to pretend to be a monster,

with a crazy psychoanalyst who hypnotizes me,

a citation from CALIGARI,

so that in the end, this game of me being a monster deflates.

In the end, I go fishing on a boat with a pretty girl.

I get ready to go fishing,

someone shouts "cut!" and a boat follows me with a film camera.

They say, "Fulci, wave!"

And I set off with the girl towards an even more amusing horizon.

- Why in A CAT IN THE BRAIN

did you feel the need to remake the shower scene from PSYCHO?

I find citations amusing.

I don't do them often.

I had fun doing it from my point of view, because it's part of my nightmares.

Having seen PSYCHO about 20 times--

My daughters have seen it at least 25 times,

we are "psycho-tics"--

I had fun redoing this scene,

as it was like depicting one of my own nightmares.

Nightmares of the actor Fulci in the film, not personal ones.

I'd always dreamt of making love with a woman in the shower,

and I did a few times, but I never butchered her.

Okay?

- That's fine.

"Do you know a director's strength?"

| said, "To get a good script.” "NO."

"What is his strength?"

I said, "I don't know. Maybe finding a good production manager,

a good cameraman, a good story line, good actors."

"No. To last."

This is a conversation I had with Ashby in New York.

"To last." A director has to last over time.

Spielberg feeds off cinema and gives birth to excellent films.

Scorsese, too, and all the old Americans, and the young ones, too.

Tarantino defines himself an omnivore of cinema.

Young directors today don't go to the cinema much.

Or they do and they judge.

The famous Italian cinema with the "crooked mouth."

Those who say, "What is this stuff?"

Start going to the cinema and love all films, not just your own.

We loved it.

Perhaps I studied at the school that loved all kinds of films.

Fred Astaire had me dreaming for years.

Fred Astaire could be shown all over the world.

His films have become classics.

And I've watched SINGING IN THE RAIN fifty times,

and some will say, "It did you no good." But I saw it.

These guys go to see films,

then you see them eating in a restaurant saying,

"What was that? Who is this guy?"

I once heard one of them say, "Who is this Ashby, after all?"

Ashby made FIVE EASY PIECES, you know.

- By the way,

will you tell me your five favorite cult movies in the world?

The first I'll share with Ghezzi, but I'm older and I started before,

from the Centro Sperimentale,

when our soundtrack was "Parlami d'amore Mariu."

Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE.

The second is ZERO FOR CONDUCT.

The third is DETOUR.

The fourth is AMARCORD.

The fifth is FREAKS.

You'll say, "Because they're your genre." Because I like Bergman,

but I would never take him on a desert island,

because then I'd jump off a cliff.

Whereas DETOUR is an extraordinarily absolute film,

similar to my own slant.

FREAKS is an absolute film.

AMARCORD is one the greatest films in film history,

usually aired on TV late at night instead of prime time.

L'ATALANTE is L'ATALANTE, an absolute masterpiece.

I'll tell you an anecdote that amuses me.

When L'ATALANTE came out, all the critics said

it was a disjointed film, with no logic to it.

Only the left-wing critics praised it

because Jean Vigo was the son of an anarchist,

unaware the film was a fantasy, which had nothing to do with social themes

and with the popular front movement of the time.

Because he is such an original and important director,

I could watch L'ATALANTE a hundred times.

I didn't care about Bergman.

I think his films are nice, but then I forget them, but not L'ATALANTE.

- I'd like to know which Italian directors you like now.

There's something sentimental about this.

I was a close friend of Elio Petri.

A nasty temperament,

but an extraordinary director who made one of the best films,

HIS DAYS ARE NUMBERED, which they air on TV at absurd times.

The story of Randone, a kind of Italian WILD STRAWBERRIES.

Splendid, and then INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION.

Valerio Zurlini, one of the greatest directors.

Italian directors?

Then Rosi, Federico, Michelangelo Antonioni.

I don't like saying "Federico."

It sounds like a form of snobbery. Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni.

People who I knew, so it's sentimental, too.

My maestro, Steno, whom no one has ever reappraised.

Not even his sons tried to revive his films.

The man who invented genres, who made cult movies.

Cult movies like AN AMERICAN IN ROME. He invented police films.

I love these directors.

I love a lot. Italian directors are the best in the world.

Where would you find another great craftsman like Lattuada?

All of them, those from my time and after.

De Sica...

I don't know who's my favorite. I love them all.

Not only those of my time, the younger ones, too.

Moretti has a terrible temperament, but he's a great director.

- What do you think of Bertolucci and Leone?

I love Leone because he's a director of unique essentiality.

His films seem so long, but they actually last three minutes.

Leone was a friend. I was fond of him. I saw them all,

and he invented a genre.

The Americans don't call them Spaghetti Westerns out of envy.

Leone invented the true western.

And even now the proglottids of Leone's great invention

can be seen in Clint Eastwood

and all the American directors who went back to making westerns.

And he also made that film about America with De Niro.

It is an extraordinary film that made no impact.

Leone is an amazing director.

And so is Bertolucci.

Bertolucci made a film I believe is a leader in historical films,

THE CONFORMIST, a wonderful film.

LAST TANGO IN PARIS, the story of two dead people.

They wander around the city and they are already dead.

They have to die.

I think the amazing fact about this great film,

that it was a success merely because of the butter,

because otherwise no one would have gone to see it.

I have an old rule: first go and see the film because it's a masterpiece.

This masterpiece by Bernardo is a fantasy film.

They are not living.

Storaro's photography already gives us this idea of the hereafter.

His dialogue with his wife who committed suicide,

which made a big impression on me,

and everything else, right to the tragic ending.

The tango. What is stranger,

more absurd, more fantastic than the tango?

A great fantasy film.

Whereas THE CONFORMIST is a wonderful historical film

in which Bertolucci's fantasy pops up in several places,

as it's a fascism revisited by someone who wasn't there.

It's a more a fantasy fascism. I lived through it, unfortunately.

Carpenter, Scorsese,

Spielberg, Bava,

Fulci and Argento, among the "gore directors," directors of horror.

Because we too have our own little place,

and the first was Mario Bava, an amazing maestro.

Who also shot in English.

We shot in English because I believe films must be understood all over the world.

The nicest photo I ever saw

was given to me by Rita Agostini, my secretary and assistant for years.

One of my films was showing in the Philippines

and there was a long queue winding around the building.

Which means they understood my films.

I dialogue with death and perhaps I'm afraid of death,

but the day I die, after all...

In your last moments they say your memories come flowing back,

so I might never die because I have so many, and I keep them inside me.

- Are you a lonely person?

No, I'm surrounded by the love of those who are no more,

and the esteem of the few that are left.

What's more, I feel rejuvenated by the fact

that I've become an avant-garde director late in life.

The fact that young people crowded around me at the Fantafestival

has encouraged me a great deal. It means I can talk in the present.

If the new critics pick out from the garbage

of trash movies--

And among these trash movies is some of my stuff--

If there's a pearl among them, they will notice it.

The problem is this: they use me, and I am very happy to be used.

Also because the things I've done, the idea of good and bad things,

I have always had, with a form of absolute cynicism.

I have always criticized my films...

Jean Pierre Melville, an excellent French director, and |

watch our films now and then and we feel like vomiting. That's true.

But I've always judged myself.

That the critics have reappraised me, that's their problem,

and if they use me, then that's their problem, too.

I remain what I am.

There was this Manichean critic

who attacked some, and then... seeing this one is good...

I saw him speak highly of Fellini's bad films,

because even a genius like Fellini made bad films,

just because he was Fellini.

That famous comment, "Why should we give BEATRICE CENCI three stars?"

"Fulci directed it. We can't give Fulci three stars.”

Critical racism and critical short-sightedness.

So, at a certain point when a young critic,

such as Carabba and the French before that--

All the new generation with Canova and the others we mentioned--

Moved Fulci's river and channeled it,

saying, "Perhaps this is an art director..."

In fact, Carabba published an article, "What If He's Good?"

Which, in my opinion, sums up my whole career.

"Help! What if he's good?"

"Horror films are liberating"

"Fulci: master of horror"

I don't know where or what my finishing line is.

It's probably a pile of ashes, but that's nice.

If I remain in the memory, according to my theory,

of those who loved me and remember me, then I will go on living.